The present invention is a novel and distinct process for commercial growth of hydrocarbons in photosynthetic organisms while maintaining a biologically exclusive monocultural environment, as for example, in the case of the present invention, from Chlorophyta, Trebouxiophyceae, and particularly Botryococcus species.
For decades, Botryococcus species have been suggested as potential sources of liquid transport fuels (Wolf, et al. 1985). Academically, Botryococcus species have proven quite attractive for their natural chemistries, but the cost for production of a gallon of renewable transport fuel exceeded the sales price of fossil fuels. A number of different culture conditions have been investigated, but a defined system for competitive growth of transport fuels has not been disclosed previously. Humanity would benefit from development of a reliable system for production of petroleum-type hydrocarbons from a renewable energy source.
Botryococcus is a primitive colonial photosynthetic organism, dating from 300 million years ago, and may be regarded as a living fossil; as, indeed, B. balkachicus; B. coorongianus; B. luteus; and B. palanaensis, are true fossil deposits. Oil shale is populated with botryococcite fossils from which petroleum deposits arose. Shale originates from mud, and in consideration of the fossil record, the methods, compositions and organisms of the present invention, allow for expression of the mud origins of live Botryococcus species, including the following: B. australis, B. braunii, B. braunii var. horridus, B. braunii var. minor, B. braunii var. perarmatus, B. braunii var. Showa, B. braunii var. validus, B. calcareous, B. canadensis, B. comperei, B. fernandoi, B. giganteus, B. micromorus, B. neglectus, and B. pila. As a result of defining its proper niche in the course of the present invention, rapid growth at the water-to-air interface was made possible by elimination of biological competition.
At the surface of mud, water evaporates and salts become concentrated to the extent that crystals may accumulate at the surface. In the present invention, I have discovered that, consistent with a mud niche, a flotation mechanism related to hydrocarbon metabolism may have evolved in photosynthetic organisms to utilize the concentrated nutrient salts at moist surfaces. That is, through natural selection, Botryococcus sp. became one of the most successful photosynthetic eukaryotes on Earth by survival in an environment intolerable to competitors. In the present invention, the environmental tolerances that made Botryococcus sp. the fittest for hundreds of millions of years are defined and utilized in novel systems for growing hydrocarbons such as gasoline commercially. Based on this understanding of Darwin's concept of, “survival of the fittest,” oleomic photosynthetic organisms were tested in nutrient salts at very high concentrations. Surprisingly, Botryococcus sp. thrived in hundreds times the concentrations of the salts in conventional nutrients. The present invention exploits the aforementioned discovery of the exclusive niche of Botryococcus sp.